May present a choking hazard

Friday, February 1, 2008

The Brave and the Bold #9

I wasn't aware of this until I saw it on the shelf at the comics store, and I wish I had just walked away.But I didn't.

There's 3 stories in this "Star-Studded Spectacular," and with the Hawkman and Atom occupying 7 pages of it, I could have just read it right there and put it back on the shelf.But I didn't.

I initially planned to just include in my previous post as a "hey, look at this," but after reading, I couldn't.

I'm not interested in the other two stories. They were cute. One group fought another. Good guys won.

Let's catch up first:The last contact the Atom and Hawkman had involved Ray telling Carter that he was going away for a while, and not to tell anyone else. Then Ray disappeared and the two have not been together since.

Fast forward to The Brave and the Bold #9. We're at Ivy University where an auditorium full of people are listening to some speaker drone on. Sitting two seats apart are Ryan Choi and Carter Hall. Neither has any knowledge that the other puts on a costume and fights crime. Carter has no idea someone else has been running around, performing "Atom" duties.Ryan sits there wondering to himself how someone of the physical nature that visiting Curator Carter Hall is, manages to be literate.Then there's an explosion, people scatter, the Warlock of YS appears, and two superheroes suit up.Whatever, that's fine.

Here's the first meeting of these two. The first time Carter sees someone, whom amidst the chaos , hethinks is Ray.After that, it's business as usual. The story ends with the duo defeating the Warlock thanks to quick thinking by Ryan, and the baddie spinning off into some bad place. Nothing else is exchanged between the Atom and Hawkman.

The "Don't embarass yourself in front of the famous super-hero" bit is funny...

But what the hell is this?

First of all, aside from the mild feeling akin to finding the mailman in your bedroom, I want to know the purpose behind this team-up.Are we testing the waters here, seeing how the "new Atom" and Hawkman feel as a team? Or are we planning to "off" Ryan in the near future, but feel he should at least meet up with Hawkman? So we'll throw him a bone in an article length B&B.

This is how Choi and Hawkman meet up?And that's Carter's reaction to someone who shows up mirroring his best friend?"Palmer? Wait, who are you? M'kay, let's do it!""You're my new BFF!'

There's no mention of Ray again. No questioning who this guy is. Carter's been around long enough to know that people try to infiltrate!

I understand someone thought this was a cute idea. Cuz, yasee... The Atom and Hawkman were slapped together into one series way back when.So gee willikers, let's get the "new Atom" and our "old, new, old, both Hawkman" into one action packed 7 page epic! No. NO. Didn't work. And what have you done?Whatever lies ahead for Choi, if it was necessary for he and Carter to cross paths, it could have been quite a book. There are numerous paths from every angle that could have been taken.If we could erase this from history and do a slight rewind, I'd help you guys come up with a humdinger. It can even be a choose your adventure book, because that's how many options there were to go with it.

But no. The half-assed treament is applied, Hawkman looks like a friggin moron, and once again someone had to get cute in what amounts to the length of an origin story, with no looking back.

Letting it get to me too much?Tell that to the one, single tear that is currently making it's way from my duct to my cheekbone.

Well, that's obviously not true or I'd be utter madness. But I'm pissed!

2 comments:

BentonGrey
said...

You know, that Kid Commandos story was pretty annoying, but I blame the characters more than anything else. Still, this wasn't a terrible issue, but I really do think that the Atom/Hawkman story needed a lot more room and had a lot more potential. (Look forward to some Brave and Bold adventures staring the real Hawkman and Atom in my mod)

Dude-- after the cartoon went over, they opted to put John Stewart and J'Onn J'Onzz on the same team. Anyone who read "Cosmic Odyssey" knows these two have some collective issues, so the dynamic should be awesome, right? Or maybe we'll just drop the ball entirely and color Hal Jordan brown! ARGH!

On the bright side, recognize that Hawkman and Atom were probably intended mostly as recognizable sales anchors while indulging a slew of box office poisons.